Good Friday 3.15pm

Friday
3.15pm

Emerging from the Nightmare

And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. But all his acquaintances including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things. (Luke 23.48-49)

Entertainment over. Well, it began like entertainment but it finished rather differently and they are glad to escape. All of a sudden, they realised what had happened; they woke up to the facts. A few days ago the people had been singing and dancing round in the street, gathering to hear every word that he had to say. Then the mood changed and they had been caught up in that. They slouched off feeling that they had been used, manipulated, as though they too had been pawns in a bigger game. What madness comes upon us when we are used by others, when we agree to something we would never really agree to? What madness comes upon us when we allow a racist, a sexist, a homophobic comment to pass without challenge? What madness comes upon us when we cry with the crowd, ‘His blood be on us and on our children’ and then we look at our children?

Jesus, Lamb of God, have mercy on us.